


Sighing Man

by raisingmybanner



Series: get myself back home [11]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brogane, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23526640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisingmybanner/pseuds/raisingmybanner
Summary: It takes a lot of patience to put up with a boy who doesn't even want to put up with himself.
Series: get myself back home [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/725445
Kudos: 10





	Sighing Man

Keith folds his arms and looks up at the man across the desk. He doesn’t lift his head to look at the man, so his view is partly obscured by his hair, which is starting to get long. The man is perusing his file. Keith recognizes the stray marks and folds on the manilla folder that he belongs to more than he’s ever belonged to a person. The man doesn’t look surprised by anything he sees. 

“Your last foster home called you ‘passionate,’” the man says, looking up.

Keith doesn’t respond to that. It wasn’t a question. 

The man looks back at the file. 

“You got into a lot of fights with their son?”

He says it like a question, but it still isn’t one. Keith doesn’t respond. Some hair falls directly into his eyes though, and he has to shake it out. He settles further into the chair in the process.

The man sighs, and looks at Keith instead of the file.

“You’re getting too old for this kind of behavior, Keith. When you’re young, people think you’re going to grow out of it.”

“I’m _eleven_.” Keith says.

The man raises an eyebrow.

“He speaks,” he says drily.

Keith just stares at him.

“You’re getting older, Keith. And unfortunately for you, you don’t look like a little kid anymore.”

_Thanks for the news flash,_ Keith thinks. As if he wasn’t aware that he was tripping and stumbling way more than he used to, bruising toes and shins on familiar dormitory furniture. That the last pair of shoes Lee and Kallie had gotten him before they sent him back were already pinching his feet, badly. As if the pain in his legs didn’t jolt him awake at night sometimes, sending him gasping and grabbing at them as if that would make them _stop growing please._

The man sighs and leans forward, across the file that owns him. All of his life, pressed beneath the thick chest of a man who looks like he couldn’t care less if you paid him to.

“If you don’t put a lid on this — this —“ he leans back to look at the file, _”passion,_ you’re going to find yourself aging out back in here, with the rest of the kids like you. Do you want that?”

Finally, a direct question. But this time, Keith elects not to answer. He runs his tongue over his teeth, keeping his eyes on the desk. Of course he doesn’t, but the man already knows that. It’s what he wants to hear. And Keith has never been one for giving anyone satisfaction.

The man sighs again. Keith is beginning to think it’s one of his favorite activities.

“Keep your nose clean, Kogane,” he says, closing the file. “I’m trying to get you placed, but with a history like yours…” He trails off.

Keith feels his eyes narrow a fraction, but he’s still just staring at the front of the desk. 

“Just… try to stay out of trouble, kid,” the man says. His voice sounds softer suddenly, but Keith still doesn’t look at him.

“You can go,” the man says after a moment.

Keith pushes himself to his feet and walks out the door, closing it behind him. The woman behind the desk ushers him through the security doors and back into the part of the building he’s more comfortable with. His home-between-homes. The Lighthouse Center. It’s free time, so most of the kids are probably in the rec room. Keith heads back to the dorm to sleep. Or maybe read, if Ein still has a book under his pillow like he used to. If he’s going to keep his nose clean, that means he has to stay away from everyone.

That also means everyone needs to stay away from him. He snorts. Fat chance. 

Still. He can give it some effort.

He walks into the dorm, and settles himself in his bed with Ein’s book. _The Scarlet Letter._ Doesn’t look too bad.

“Nice book.”

Keith doesn’t even look up. He recognizes the voice as belonging to Easton. _Way above your pay grade,_ he wants to say, but refrains. 

_Keep your nose clean, Kogane._ The way the man had said it makes it sound like his next placement might be his last shot. He’s only eleven, though. Some of the boys had gotten placements well into their 7 th grade year. _But those boys didn’t have a record like mine,_ he was willing to bet. His life feels high-stakes all of a sudden. It’s not like he’d never considered the idea of aging out at Lighthouse, but that didn’t mean that he’d considered it as a viable option. There was a part of him that wondered if he would make it that far, and another part of him that wondered what that meant? 

But it’s thoughts like these that made that nervous energy start sparking through him, which always seemed to lead to trouble. So he focuses harder on the words in front of him. The long sentences. The old-timey phrasing.

“I’m talking to you.”

_I know. I’m not as stupid as you are._

Keith keeps reading, until Easton grabs the book from his hands, and Keith hears a ripping sound. A couple of the pages fall out. Keith would feel bad, but he’s too busy being annoyed at the older boy dangling the book in front of him like a cartoon villain. He just stares at him until the boy laughs and throws the book back at him, _hard_. Keith catches it reflexively, and the boy laughs again before wandering out of the room.

Easton wasn’t particularly difficult to deal with most of the time. It was the quieter ones who whispered the crueler things. Those were harder for Keith to ignore. But he told himself he was going to try. Really try, this time.

That worked for about a week.

Before someone picked a fight and Keith didn’t keep his mouth shut. His grim victory was that the other kid — he didn’t even know his name, nor did he care — looked _way_ worse than him, despite being bigger than Keith. 

And as he sat in front of the sighing man, being told that this was yet another fight on his record, he remembered why he didn’t bother trying. Because it never worked anyway.

Maybe he wouldn’t even have a last shot.


End file.
